


Uncle

by joinedunderprotest



Series: At Storm's End a.k.a. the Uncleverse [4]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Jon Snow Needs a Hug, Twenty Years Later, arya and gendry have a whole bunch of kids, arya is jon's favourite person in the entire world what can i tell you, this isn't exactly anti-sansa but it's definitely not pro-sansa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-10 00:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18927796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joinedunderprotest/pseuds/joinedunderprotest
Summary: Jon ignored every pardon the Crown ever sent. There was nothing for him south of the Wall. Until it turned out there was.





	Uncle

**Author's Note:**

> Written in one day based on my headcanons and the nagging of my darling woodpecker.
> 
> This is not in exactly the same universe as "Like Rations and Taxes (and Forks)" but it's pretty damn close.

Ten years after Jon murdered his Queen, the first pardon came.

He had been away ranging for weeks, but when he returned to Castle Black, he found the raven on his desk. It looked like Tyrion Lannister’s hand and sounded like his words, as he, on behalf of King Bran, informed Jon that the Council had agreed that Jon had repented for his crime and if he came to King’s Landing to show he was sufficiently remorseful for what he had done, they would be willing to consider absolving him and lifting his exile.

Jon threw the message in the fire, and then went out to chop wood, with the overwhelming desire to swing an axe. So good of Lord Tyrion to consider pardoning him for the crime he had all but begged him to commit. How thoughtful of the Council to offer to let him go free, if they judged him penitent enough.

He had not slept peacefully in ten years. He still remembered the feel of her wrapped around him, the sound she made when he pierced her, the heat on his face as the last dragon burnt the Iron Throne. He was penitent enough, haunted enough, never to walk free again. He did not need or wish to prove this unending shame to anyone.

He must have offended them with his dismissal of their offer. They did not send another pardon for five years more. The writing was different. Perhaps there was a new Hand. The first time Jon had been Lord Commander, he had been obliged to keep abreast of the Southron games. Now he banned their mention entirely.

This pardon was not so lofty as the first, though still mealy-mouthed compared to the rough talk of the Free Folk which was all he’d known for fifteen years. It said King Bran recognised all he had done for the realm, and that he was pardoned unconditionally, free to leave the Wall and travel the realm as it pleased him, though it did request he first travel to King’s Landing to meet the King.

Where would he go, south of the Wall? Not King’s Landing, never again. Queen Sansa’s Winterfell held little appeal either. He could not journey west of Westeros without a crew of his own, and even if he did, he did not know where to begin searching for his little sister, assuming the voyage had not killed her. Instead, Jon advanced the planned outset of a new ranging mission, and did not return for three months.

After that, the pardons became a yearly ordeal. In his sixteenth year of exile, the letter was self-righteous and indignant. In his seventeenth year, it was pleading, coaxing. The eighteenth and nineteenth years, the letters were thrown into the fire, unopened.

The twentieth year, the pardon was delivered in person by someone he'd hoped never to see again.

“Hello, Jon,” Queen Sansa greeted him, as he stepped into his study to find her waiting for him in his own chair.

Jon did not answer. He crossed his arms and looked his cousin up and down. She was well-groomed, in her grey gown and her cape pinned at the throat with a direwolf. She had a circlet of silver atop her head, matching the silver strands appearing among her auburn updo. She had dark circles beneath her eyes and crow’s feet at the corners. Still tall, but a bit thicker around the midsection than she had been. She was aging - gracefully, no doubt, but still aging.

She sat stiff and straight, and she seemed to be trying to look affectionate, but Jon wanted no part in that.

He caught sight of the scroll in her hands.

“King Bran sent you,” he noted. It wasn’t a question. He didn’t even really want her to answer.

“I offered to carry the message,” she corrected. “I wanted to see you.”

“You’ve seen me,” he replied, moving to stoke his dying fire. Over his shoulder, he added, “See you in another twenty years.”

“Jon,” she tried.

“I’m staying, Your Grace.” It had been so long since he had had use for that title, and it still hurt. “You should return to your own family.”

“What family?” she asked, bitterly. “We all went our separate ways, remember? And I never married. I am not willing to share my power, not with anyone.”

“I know that well.” _Winterfell is yours, Your Grace._ “Still, a queen needs heirs. Or are you willing to let the Stark line die out just to be sole power in the North?”

“I have plans for that, don’t worry yourself. There is no shortage of heirs with Stark blood to be found.”

“How nice for you. Perhaps you might like to go to them instead.”

“That’s enough,” said Sansa in her most queenly tone.

“Yes, it is. Enough. Go back to Winterfell, and tell your kingly brother not to send me any more letters. I won’t go back to Winterfell with you, nor to King’s Landing with him. There is nothing for me south of the Wall.”

“Not even Arya?” Sansa asked quietly.

Jon’s hands tightened around the mantle above the fireplace. _Little sister._

“Arya left. She didn’t want to come north. She wanted to go west. Find out what was west of Westeros.”

“Do you know what’s west of Westeros, Jon? Essos.”

Jon furrowed his brow in confusion, turning back to face her.

“Yes, if you had bothered to turn your head south for even five minutes, you would have heard long ago that the world is round. It has changed everything we ever knew. The Citadel has many acolytes forging chains in geography. There is travel from Westeros to Asshai and Yi-Ti. The world is a much bigger place than it was. And Arya is the one who made it so. They don’t just call her Arya Nightslayer. She’s Arya Farscope now, too, the woman who looked past the horizon.”

Jon struggled for words. Arya, his Arya. Had she done all this herself?

“She’s come back?” he asked, voice suddenly soft and hopeful. “When?”

“Her journey only lasted two years.”

Eighteen years. Eighteen years Arya had been back. “She would have come to see me.”

“You told me she swore never to go north again. She kept that promise. She hasn’t left the South since she returned. She’s spent more time living down there than she did in Winterfell.”

“She hasn’t even been to Winterfell?” he repeated, stunned. “Why not? She’s always hated the South.”

Sansa watched him, not quite kindly. “Do you imagine you are the only person in the world with painful memories?”

Jon reddened with irritation. “Of course not. But surely her memories of King’s Landing are even worse.”

“She didn’t go to King’s Landing,” Sansa corrected, soft once again. “She went to the Stormlands.”

“Why the Stormlands?” She had never even been, that he knew of. “What could they have held for her?”

“They held Lord Gendry Baratheon, whom she married as soon as she docked. And now, they hold their six children.”

 _Six-_ He could not believe that Arya had ever even taken a lover. To think she was wed and a mother of six was- It was impossible.

“Why Gendry? I never even saw her speak to him.”

“Apparently they were closer than any of us knew. I once tried to talk to her about her wedding night, and she assured me that she had already given Gendry her maidenhead back at Winterfell. She just didn’t feel the need to mention it. But it seems they married for love. Lord Baratheon famously refused to consider any brides at all until Arya returned to him, and then they wed almost at once.”

Arya laying with a man, Arya loving a man, Arya marrying a man in a whirlwind. It was too much to believe.

“You’re lying to me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you seek to trick me. Because you want to bend me to your will. Because that’s what you do.”

“You know, I am very tired of this. I travelled all the way here in the middle of a harvest just to persuade you to climb down from your broken, pointless wall and stop wallowing in your own misery. In truth, I do not want you at Winterfell, since you once had ownership of it and might undermine me with my bannermen, and it is no skin off King Brandon’s nose if you do not come to King’s Landing. Arya is the one who has been begging for years for him to deliver you from this frozen hovel.”

Jon’s breath hitched. “It was Arya? Why?”

“Ask her yourself. I am going back to my own castle. It’s up to you whether you stay in yours or go to see what has become of perhaps the last person who loves you.”

And with that, the woman he once called sister strode out. He staggered to the chair she had vacated and fell into it.

It might be a trick. It must be a trick. If Arya were somewhere in Westeros, he would _know_. She hadn’t written, hadn’t come to see him. She would not have shunned him like this. It must be a lie. To think it was not, that Arya had lived a life of which he had no part, wounded him so deeply he nearly resolved to stay at Castle Black regardless.

But if it was true, if it was _true_ , then his little sister was out there in the world, somewhere where he could find her and embrace her once again. And her children were out there, too, for him to cradle and dote upon.

The horror he had carried these twenty years would never lessen. He did not deserve to feel it lessen. He could barely remember a time when he had not carried it with him. But if he tried, he could recall a feeling of peace, when his favourite person had thrown her skinny little arms around his neck and trusted him with everything she had and was.

He called for his steward. It was time to go.

-

The Kingsroad stretched from Castle Black all the way to Storm’s End. The road was ancient and had been trod by countless travellers, and yet the whole way, he could not help but feel like that was fate, as if it had been built just to some day carry Jon there.

He was only one man, and strong despite his advancing years. He could have done the trip in a scant month, but he had taken a longer, winding road to avoid King’s Landing. He would never go there again, not for anything. It was nearing the end of his fifth week that he spied the great castle of Durran Godsgrief.

The closer it loomed, the more threatening it seemed. This had been a mistake. Either Sansa had lied and Arya was not there, or she was and she had cut him out of her life. He was not sure which would be worse. Or perhaps he had gotten lost. Perhaps someone had changed the path of the Kingsroad and he was on a fool’s errand.

He spotted a gang of children playing by the side of the road, wielding sticks as swords.

“Not fair!” came a boyish cry. “ _I_ wanted to slay the Night King!”

“You slew him last time!” came the retort. “It’s my turn.”

He walked his horse to them, and saw them notice him as he dismounted. He would have liked to smile reassuringly, but he doubted his forced rictus would do much to set them at ease.

“Good day,” he offered. He gestured to the castle. “Is this Storm’s End?”

“It is,” the oldest of the group, a young woman of perhaps seventeen, confirmed. He saw her shoo a small child behind her leg for safekeeping.

“And who owns this castle?” he asked, heart pounding.

A lad of no more than fifteen, going by the dark shadow upon his cheek which was not yet a beard, shifted next to the girl. He tightened his grip around the heavy stick in his hand, and Jon saw the boy’s eyes dart toward a discarded cloak on the ground, as if there might be something of value beneath it, a weapon to wield or money to be stolen. He was only right to be suspicious; Jon was dressed all in black, and a deserter from the Watch was a dangerous man.

“The Stormlands belong to my lord father, Gendry Baratheon, and my lady mother, Arya Stark,” the boy announced, jaw set.

Jon’s heart stopped. These were them. Arya’s children. She was here, and she was a wife and mother.

He took stock of the creatures. A sea of black hair and blue eyes. They were all tall and broad-shouldered, even the girl. He spied three more boys, one who looked to be eleven or twelve, and two of eight years at most.

He did not know what to say to them. They were his kin, and yet they were strangers to him. They watched with suspicion, grouping together, prepared to repel the deserter as one. It might have made him proud if it did not break his heart.

“Mycah,” said the girl, still watching him carefully, “take the littl’uns back inside and get someone to come here.”

The boy of twelve nodded and moved to grab the two younger boys.

“We can help, Ned,” the smallest boy insisted, and Jon couldn’t help but start when he realised that Ned was the girl.

“She said to go,” warned the eldest boy. "And take you-know-who along, quick.”

But the moment the children started to move, something darted out from behind Ned the Girl’s legs.

It was the smallest child he had seen her try to hide. As the child emerged, Jon’s heart began to beat again. For this child was not tall and did not share the others’ colouring. This one was tiny, with messy brown hair surrounding a pale, inquisitive face.

She looked exactly as Arya had looked as a girl of three.

Ned tried to grab her and pull her back, but the child was too fast for her. She toddled up to Jon, and he felt powerless before her wide grey eyes.

“Hello,” he attempted, and that was as far as he got before she wrapped her short, chubby arms around his knee and buried her face in his leg.

“Lyanna!” her siblings cried, rushing towards her. Two of her brothers tried to pry her off Jon’s leg, but she only growled at them and clung tighter.

 _She sounds like a wolf_ , Jon thought to himself, delighted. He couldn’t help but reach down to muss her hair, and he heard smacking sounds which he realised were big, noisy kisses being pressed to his leg.

The others, realising that Jon did not intend to hurt their baby sister, relaxed a little, but still fretted.

“Ly,” pleaded young Mycah, “you can’t go around hugging strangers. It’s dangerous.”

“He’s not a stranger, stupid,” said Lyanna, and the exasperation in her little infant voice was so familiar Jon huffed with laughter. He felt her reach up and pat the hilt of his sword. “He has Longclaw, so he’s Uncle Jon and I love him.”

The girl beamed up at him and threw her arms up. “I love you! Up, Uncle, up!”

Jon held out arms that did not feel attached to his body to pick the girl up and hold her close. He cupped her little head with one hand and looked into her bright, open face. All at once, he felt overwhelmed by feelings of warmth and love such as he had not felt in twenty years or more.

“Oh, little one, I love you too.” He did. She was his sister’s child and he loved her.

“Is it true?” one of the boys asked, blue eyes round.

“Are you really our uncle Jon?” asked another.

“I am,” Jon confirmed, and he felt a true smile spread across his face.

“Should I still go get someone, Ned?” asked Mycah.

“No, no,” babbled Ned the Girl, and then she caught herself and stood up straight and confident. “I think we ought to go see Mother and Father. All of us.”

She took one of the youngest boys in each hand. The eldest went over to Jon’s horse and led it by the reins, while Mycah gathered up and shook out the pile of cloaks, under which Jon did see a cache of short daggers and a hammer.

“Uncle, go!” Lyanna cried, pointing to the castle. She dug her heels into his side and tugged his hair to steer him.

The other children watched him as they set out, now more curious than hostile.

“I’m Rickon,” said one of the boys holding Ned’s hands.

“I’m Steffon.”

“We’re twins,” they said in unison.

“Not everyone can tell,” said Steffon, “because we’re not idennical. But we are.”

“I am pleased to meet you both,” said Jon, still smiling.

He looked over at the one leading his horse.

“Davos,” the lad offered, and said nothing else, but he did not seem ill-disposed to him. Perhaps he was just quiet, like Arya had become after her time on her own.

The guards called out to each other as the group approached, and the drawbridge was brought down.

“Jeron,” Ned called with a quiet authority which reminded Jon of her namesake, “where are the Lord and Lady?”

“In the family quarters, I should say, m’lady,” came the reply. “Audiences wrapped up for the day not twenty minutes ago. Pardon my asking, but who is the man? Is he a recruiter for the Watch?”

“Never you mind. Send Kent to see to his horse.”

They crossed the courtyard and passed into the massive tower.

“Hope you don’t mind stairs,” commented Davos.

Jon reassured his nephew that he did not, but by the seventh floor, he felt his age keenly in his aching knees and strained breath.

“Let me down,” Lyanna ordered, and when he complied, she took him by the hand and pulled him ahead. “I’ll help you.”

“What would I do without you?” he asked, loving his niece more every moment.

“Here we are,” announced Ned as they finally stepped into a hallway. “Let’s play our noisy game.”

Lyanna and the twins began railing and tumbling around at the top of their lungs as they rushed forward.

“An unusual game,” Jon noted.

“A necessary one, Uncle. I learned when I was still young that the more notice my parents have that we are approaching, the better the odds that we avoid an uncomfortable moment.”

Jon’s cheeks reddened, the moment punctuated as Rickon and Steffon began pounding some elaborate rhythm on a wooden door.

The door swung open and both boys were lifted up into a great pair of arms.

“Father, Father, you’ll never guess what happened!” both boys gushed.

“Was it something amazing? Did you two manage to play Nightslayer without squabbling?” Twenty years of lordship had not erased the man’s Flea Bottom accent, it seemed.

Jon watched as Gendry Baratheon held his sons close. His hair was a bit longer, and he had grown a beard, shot through with silver. He was not as trim as he had been as a young man, but his strength was still apparent and he was not fat like his late father the King.

“No, Father,” said Rickon, who pointed behind him in Jon’s direction. “ _Look!_ ”

Gendry followed his son’s finger and his eyes landed on Jon. He went white, and gently dropped the twins to their feet.

“Arya!” he called, turning his head to look back into his rooms. “Get out here!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.”

Arya appeared in the doorway, tying the laces on her doublet. “Ned’s noisy game is the smartest thing she’s ever done,” she muttered, before looking at Rickon and Steffon. “Now, what have I told you? Next time, you can both slay the Night King. If I had had a twin, I would certainly have brought her with me, and we would’ve killed him even faster.”

“Mama, Uncle Jon’s here!” cried the delighted Lyanna.

Arya looked over at her daughter in confusion, and then her eyes skipped back a step.

“Jon?” she asked, her voice small and wavering.

“Arya.” There she was. His little sister, grown and lovely. Her hair was a mess and she wore soft grey breeches and no shoes, and she was still so small and skinny. She was exactly as he’d imagined her, and that meant something. It really did.

Arya let out a watery laugh and then she was racing for him, and throwing herself into his arms, as if she were still an eleven-year-old girl who loved her brother best of anyone in the world. He never thought he’d be able to put his arms around her and feel at home again.

He felt tears on his neck and heard her sobbing into his shoulder, and he only held her closer.

“Don’t cry, Mama,” soothed the worried Lyanna, patting her mother’s calves. “This is a happy day. Uncle Jon came home.”

Arya pulled her head back and looked at her daughter, wiping her tears on the back of her hand. “I know, little wolf. I’m crying because I’m so very happy your uncle’s here.”

Arya looked the scene over, at a loss. “We should, ah- we should…”

“Let’s all sit down,” suggested Gendry. He beckoned his children inside. “Come on.”

Arya and Jon brought up the end of the line, still clutching each other. They stumbled into the family solar, and as soon as they were sat down, Lyanna crawled into her uncle’s lap, nestling in his furs. “Soft,” she observed, pleased.

“You finally came,” said Arya. “It’s been so long. I’ve been trying to get you away from the Wall for ten years.”

“I didn’t know it was you. I only received notes on Bran’s behalf, saying I could go free if I went to King’s Landing and begged and groveled enough.”

“Fucking Tyrion,” Arya growled, furious.

“Mother said ‘fucking,’” snickered Steffon.

“Language, Arya!” Gendry warned.

“It’s too late, Gendry. They’ve heard me swear a thousand times. They know all the words.” Turning back to Jon, she informed him, “Gendry’s never quite forgiven me for Ned’s first words being ‘Oh shit.’”

Jon laughed sharply at that. “Were they really?”

“She was building a tower of blocks, and then they fell over, and she just looked up at me and said it in her serious little voice,” Gendry recalled, sounding annoyed but very fond.

“Did Mother say something bad for her first words too?” asked Mycah, who had taken a frond from a vase and was fiddling with the leaves.

Jon squeezed Arya’s hand. “Her first word was ‘Jon,’ and it was one of the proudest days of my life.”

Arya smiled at him, and then her face morphed back into a scowl. “I cannot believe Tyrion said such things. High-handed little prick. Makes me glad he’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Probably about a year after that, Bronn was caught having stolen about half of the treasury. Tyrion tried to cover it up for him, which was stupid on two counts. First, Bronn wouldn’t have done the same for him in a million years. Second, you have to be a true fool to try to lie to Bran. Anyways, Bronn got the chop, and Tyrion was sent back the Westerlands in disgrace. Now the Lannisport Lannisters are Wardens of the West, and he’s alone in an empty castle atop an empty mine. But the politics can be for later.”

“Aye,” agreed Jon, though it brought him some measure of petty satisfaction. “I’m more interested in hearing about how you went from explorer of the seas to Lady of Storm’s End.”

Gendry and Arya’s eyes met, and they seemed to have an entire conversation without saying a word.

“Why don’t you all go the kitchens?” Gendry suggested to their brood. “Tell the cooks that we must have a nice dinner to celebrate your uncle’s arrival. And you can beg Hot Pie for some sweets to ruin your appetites.”

The three youngest boys shot up and rushed out the door, Davos following patiently behind. Ned tried to gather her sister up in her arms, but the little one only burrowed further into Jon’s cloak.

“No, I like Uncle Jon,” she argued, trying to hold on.

Ned was not to be deterred, though, and pulled her sister away, shushing her anguished cries. “Mother, Father, and our uncle have grown-up things to talk about. We’ll see them at dinner, and you can hang off him then.”

Little Lyanna waved to him over Ned’s shoulder, and he waved back.

“She's just like you,” Jon marvelled. “Like she was just plucked out of the past.”

“She was a difficult birth, but it was worth it just to be spared people telling me ‘the seed is strong’ twenty times a day.”

“Did you get that with the others?”

“Constantly. It was worst with Davos. He was the quintessential Baratheon babe, I’m told, hollering so loud the stones of the curtain wall shook. It was a surprise that it took him so long to talk. Gendry says he got all the noise out of his system as a babe, and he hasn’t felt the need to make a peep since then.”

“Mycah’s quiet too,” added Gendry.

“Mycah’s different,” Arya argued.

“Different how?”

“Mycah is … soft.” She smiled as she said it. “He’s gentler than the rest. I had to write Sansa in a panic when I realised I didn’t know a thing about flower arranging or playing instruments to entertain him. I swear, I could hear her laughing at me from Winterfell.”

“A child of Arya Stark’s who wants to sit quietly and do nice things,” Jon summarised. “And a boy, no less. The gods do love a laugh.”

“Any other questions about them?”

“One. Did you really name your daughter Ned? Is it meant to be short for something?”

“Yes. Eddard.”

“Did it not occur to you-”

“I swore that I would name my firstborn for Father, and I don’t see why I should have broken that oath just because she was born a girl.”

Jon looked over at Gendry. “And you saw no issue with this?”

“Arya laboured a day and half to birth my babe, Jon. You think I was going to bitch about names after that?”

“The name suits her anyways. She’ll make a fine Warden of the South someday.”

“She’s the heir?” It ought not have been a surprise, but it was. “Have you instituted Dornish inheritance law in the Stormlands?”

“We have. I’m lobbying Bran to make it law across Westeros, but those old arseholes are stubborn.”

“But you’re stubborner still,” Gendry commented, squeezing Arya’s knee and receiving an approving smile in return, and she picked the hand off her knee to hold in her own.

Jon watched the exchange with bizarre fascination. “You truly did marry for love, didn’t you? I couldn’t believe it when I heard it. How? You only knew each other briefly. You don’t seem the type to fall in love at first sight. Neither of you.”

“No, we’re not,” Arya conceded. “But Winterfell was not our first sight of each other. We met each other long before, and then we were separated when that witch stole him away from me.”

Jon struggled with the math of ages long past. "You were so young then. Were you two…?”

“Gods, no,” Gendry answered, horrified. “She was barely thirteen back then. I loved her as my best friend in the world, but I didn’t look at her like that.”

“Then how did you end up here?” Jon asked, gesturing at their home.

Gendry looked at Arya with his heart in his eyes, and with a tug, he pulled her into his lap, with no resistance on her part.

“When we met again in Winterfell, she was still my best friend, but now she was a woman grown and beautiful.” Arya made a face at that, but Gendry only nuzzled her, speaking tenderly. “Most beautiful girl I ever saw.”

“I’d always wanted him like that, ever since I was twelve years old,” Arya freely admitted. “He’s the only man I ever wanted. And the world was coming to an end, so I didn’t want to miss my chance.”

Jon remembered Sansa telling him that Arya had surrendered her maidenhead in Winterfell, and chose to change the subject before he heard something he did not want to know.

“Then why the sea voyage? If you were so mad for each other, why be Arya Farscope when you could be Arya Baratheon instead? There was no barrier to your marriage once the- once Gendry was legitimised.”

Arya and Gendry stared at each other for a long moment, sharing another exchange to which Jon was not privy, then Gendry rested his brow on Arya’s collarbone and she brought a hand up to stroke the back of his head.

“The barrier was me,” Arya quietly informed Jon. “There was a hole in my heart. I had lost so many people over the years, including myself. I couldn’t- I needed time. The voyage wasn’t really about a burning desire to explore and figure out the world was round. Don’t tell Grand Maester Tarly I said that, by the way.”

Jon tried to laugh at that.

“I just needed to find myself again, to be on my own and learn to live with all that I’d lost, and all that I could have if I wanted it. And I found that what I wanted was to do something that mattered. I used to think that being a lady didn’t matter. It does, though. We’ve done a lot here. We’re a good team, Gendry and I.”

Gendry’s head rose at that, and he planted a soft kiss on her lips, looking up at her with tenderness that was almost embarrassing to witness.

“That was the other thing. I was afraid to be a lady, but I was more afraid of losing my family again. I was so afraid that Gendry would wake up one day and realise that he didn’t want me, with all my burdens and my edges. I expected that when I returned to Westeros, he’d be wed to some fine lady and I would have to be happy for him. But for all he calls me stubborn, he’s the one who spent two years refusing every woman he met to try to be faithful to someone who never even promised she’d come back. And I thought maybe he really would stay with me. Maybe we could be a family.”

“And we are,” Gendry vowed, voice low, holding her hand up to his mouth and kissing her knuckles.

Jon cleared his throat. He did not need to see this. Arya looked back at him, as if reminded of his presence. She slipped off Gendry’s lap and returned to his side.

“I thought you might be the same as me,” she told him.

“We are the same in many ways, little sister. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“I thought you needed to be on your own to heal.”

A lump appeared in his throat, cutting off his air.

“And what you underwent was so enormous that I gave you so much time. When you ignored the pardons, I didn’t want to harry you. But I hoped you’d recover in time.”

“That was good of you,” he tried.

She shook her head, eyes tearing up like the day they had parted. “It was a mistake. I see that now. You’ve been on your own when what you needed was to have someone. I should have gone north and dragged you back here by the hair. I wanted you there on my wedding day, and the births of my children, and your namedays, and solstice feasts, and rainy days, and when I missed everyone who was lost. And I had my family to get me through those times, but you didn’t have yours.”

And Jon broke.

He wept, as he hadn’t since he was a child feeling like no one in the world valued him, save for his little sister. He wept for Daenerys, Ygritte, his black brothers and his Stark brothers, for the parents he never knew and his father that never was, for the endless, endless loneliness of nearly thirty years.

And he wept with gratitude, that there was still someone in the world who saw him, understood him, loved him.

“Stay,” Arya begged through her own tears.

“Arya.”

She pulled back and looked at him, hope lighting up her face, not bothering to wipe the tear tracks from her cheeks.

“This is where you belong, Jon. Not the Wall where you’ll punish yourself forever. With your family. I’m here. My children have grown up on stories of you, as a hero and as my favourite brother. Lyanna has already decided you belong to her. You have a family. All my life, wherever I’ve gone, there has been your family. So stay.”

“That’s right, stay!” came a muffled voice from behind the door. Gendry moved quickly to open the door, and six children toppled into the room, their faces ranging from mortification (Mycah) to bold defiance (Lyanna). The children quickly rallied and raced over to Jon.

“Please stay,” begged Rickon.

“Pleeeeease,” insisted Steffon.

“You’re our kin, Uncle. You belong with us, not on the Wall,” Ned stated sombrely.

“It would break our hearts to lose you now that we’ve met you,” said Mycah.

“You’re all right,” tossed out Davos, but he looked as intent as the rest of them.

Little Lyanna said nothing, only climbed back up on him and enclosed herself in his cloak so that she was only a pair of legs sticking out from the heavy black wool.

“My home is always open to you, Jon Snow,” added Gendry. “Both because I like you well, and because if you leave now I will drown in a flood of my family’s tears, and drowning is the most embarrassing way a storm lord can die.”

Jon looked over the sea of children and his teary-eyed sister. Beneath his cloak, Lyanna’s tiny fist seized his tunic and refused to let go.

And for the first time in so long, Jon thought perhaps he ought to have a family.

**Author's Note:**

> Headcanons for Ned the Girl, Mycah the soft boy, and teeny tiny Lyanna are credited to [gennybfromtheblock](https://gennybfromtheblock.tumblr.com/)
> 
> You can find me on tumblr [@arsenicandfinelace](http://arsenicandfinelace.tumblr.com/).


End file.
